Greetings fair readers,

I bring to you today further good tidings upon the virtues of Plantain. I must say that again I have practiced my own medicine. Yesterday while out picking more of these plentiful beneficial "weeds" from the side lawn, I managed to embed a piece of something right directly into my cuticle. Ouch! I couldn't pick it out right away so it got sore. I did remove it but it continued to get sore. So, this would lead me to believe that either the impailer had some type of irritant in it, or that fragments not visible to me are still lodged into the the delicate skin here, at either rate causing the skin to need to push this foreign matter out.

What helps speed this?  Drawing salve. And it's so easy to make!
I put just the direct plantain oil on my finger before bed under a band-aid, since I haven't prepared an ointment from it yet, and the soreness was SIGNIFICANTLY better by morning. :)
This presents the perfect opportunity to share a few notes about the next phase my experiments will be heading in, now that I have completed some balms.

"Once upon a time, a homemade drawing salve formed the cornerstone of a family's first aid chest. Everyone kept drawing salve for use on humans and animals alike. Homemade drawing salve consists of various healing herbs mixed into a beeswax and oil base." --Homemade Drawing Salve

"The purpose of a drawing salve is to rid impurities or small foreign bodies from the skin. Drawing salves are often used to remove splinters, bee stings and the toxins in boils, for example" --eHow

Prepare an infusion of plantain leaves and lavender flowers by placing the clean, dry herbs in a glass jar and filling it with oil. Plantain leaf is the active ingredient in the drawing salve, and lavender is an herbal antiseptic.

The base of your drawing salve can be made from one of two ingredients according to your preference: melted beeswax or melted vegetable shortening. Add 1/2 teaspoon of benzoin to each pint of salve after it has melted. This will act as a natural preservative.

You will blend your oil and base in a separate container. Mix them together well. You'll want the concentration to be about half oil and half wax or shortening. This will allow the salve to set when it cools without being so hard that it is difficult to apply to the skin.

While the salve is still warm and easy to mix you may wish to add a few drops of other beneficial essential oils. After all, this is one of the advantages of preparing your own homemade drawing salve. Add only two to three drops of each oil and mix them well.

After you have put the salve into its final storage container, it will stay fresh for weeks or months. Pay attention to the smell for indications that it has turned rancid. Apply it to the skin as needed by smearing it on the affected area and covering it with a bandage. The salve should work quickly to draw forth the infection, boil or splinter.

In order to submit my Magna Faire project, after talking with Alianore about the project and deciding where I was heading with this, I made the choice to do things in the right order -- not by making something then documenting it, which as Magdalena pointed out can be difficult to get documented properly. I used the documentation to determine what I needed to do with this project in order to really create this as it would have been in Medieval Period, which is really the whole point!  So, I am re-working the oil.

First I picked a nice batch of ribwort from the yard. Next I washed and dried it.

Then I tore it by hand and crushed it to bruise the leaves with a mortar and pestle.
 Then I placed the bruised leaves into a glass jar, NOT pressing them down but just to fill the jar.
(How nice that I picked exactly enough!)
 The last step at this phase is to pour olive oil into the jar, just to cover the leaves. Shake or tap to get the air bubbles out so that all leaves are in all contact with oil. 
 Cap the jar and wait a couple of weeks. You will know it's ready when it smells sort of like pepperoni!

At that point you just strain the oil through a cloth into another vessle, and it's ready for whatever you plan on doing with it next.  And then you will have an herbal infused oilve oil!

The class by William Ismead at Fall Coronation 2011 taught me a simple process to make lip balms. I will be sharing his notes along with my experiment experience with the Barony in a class on Dec 13, so I have practiced said experiment in order to determine the right amount of content per container.

I created some balms last night and here's how it went!

First, you melt the beeswax.

 Next, you pour in the oil and let the mixture warm up, stirring.
 Add in the desired amount of essential oil for scent + flavoring.
*The best oils to use are citrus (lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, grapefruit), peppermint, and we'll see how Clove works out. Not too much or it will numb the lips! ;D

Now, you pour the mixture into the containers. Don't dilly dally around or it will start to cool off and harden in your container! Just re-heat if this occurs.

And that's it! The balms are all done.

I've posted before about the amazing virtues of Aloe Vera. It's the only face cream you ever need unless you like blemishes or skin problems. Just put it on at night, EVERY night, and you'll thank me in a month. Yes, you can use the green or clear "goo" you get at the pharmacy for sunburn for this.


But that's not the reason I'm posting today. I want to talk about the amazing healing properties of fresh aloe vera. I've been practicing my own medicine. I burned my thumb pretty bad on a microwaved frozen lasagna dinner fresh outta the microwave last night. Yeah, I knew better, but I forgot and did it anyway.

Now, normally a burn like this will be blistering up pretty good in the near future. But I decided to act fast. I grabbed an ice cube from the freezer and held it on as long as I could stand it. But I was baking so halfway through the cube was about it. I figured this should help, since applied immediately. Halfway through my baking, my thumb began to feel like it was on fire. A prickly, burning, tingling fire.  Oh no, I thought to myself! That's it, this one's going to be fun tomorrow. I wanted to do something right away for the pain so I went to the bathroom and grabbed the Solarcaine which did help....for about 2 minutes. Keep in mind this is just a pain killer, not an actual treatment.

So what do you treat burns with? Aloe Vera. Right. So I grabbed a chunk off a leaf from one of my plants in the kitchen and squeezed it on, and wrapped a mongo bandaid around it to keep the stuff on there. At this point I just wanted to start healing treatment and let it burn and blister as it would, as I expected already by then. I left the bandage on until bed time when I decided a fresh round would be in order. Much to my surprise, it was already healed....! Just several hours ago it was a red stinging mess.  And now, rubbing it, it barely felt sore along one side, and you certainly couldn't tell it had been burned. Granted, it was only of the first degree, but still.
*They say you should apply it several times a day, and should always cool the wound off before applying it.
*They also say you should not use ice, but cold tap water.

So you tell me, does aloe vera work, or does it work!